Common Rosources for

knowledge, information & assistance

By Ipsita Mishra

Talk with the Community

http://drupal.org/user/172344IRC Nick: ipsita

Currently working for Melity Inc in association with PCI Hyderabad

Objectives

To give a simple presentation of the various on-line resources for seeking information and assistance in open source products and technologies.

To encourage user to explore these resources to reduce their dependency on others.

To better understand and utilize open source products and technologies.

To increase participation in open source community.

To initiate and encourage the process of knowledge sharing with others.

Resources Index

Mailing-lists RSS Feeds Forums IRC Drupal Groups

Mailing-Lists

Repositories of all the queries and their responses from users associated with any open source product or technology.

On-line communities which involves from novice to experienced users to product developers.

Any issue or post from any subscribed user is received by all the registered members of list.

How it works?

Every mailing-list has an e-mail address for posting issues to list.

User can write an email describing the concerned issue and post it on the mailing list's address.

Any issue posted to mailing list is broadcasted to all the subscribed users.

Any user willing to respond can reply it.

History of each discussion is maintained in terms of threads. Similar threads are combined together in categories. An archive of such threads are also maintained.

Mailing-List Examples

Drupal Support List

http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/support

Drupal Development List

http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/development

Pros & Cons

ProsOne can learn from the problems other face with its possiblesolution.One can browse the list archives for all the threads regardingan issue.No need to visit the mailing list website for post's status.

ConsInteraction is passive. User has to mail the issue and wait forthe reply.Response time might increase a lot in case list users respondlate.

RSS Feeds

Abbreviation which expands to multiple meanings depending upon the version. Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0) RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)

RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.On Web pages, RSS feeds are typically linked with the word "Subscribe", an orange rectangle, a feed icon, or with the letters XML or RSS.

Examples

http://drupal.org/node/feed

http://groups.drupal.org/rss.xml

http://groups.drupal.org/node/3060/feed

Requirements

RSS Feed link (.rss, .xml) RSS Feed reader/client

All latest browsers (like Firefox and IE) have integrated support, or extensions available for reading RSS Feeds.

Many e­mail clients like Thunderbird also has support for reading RSS Feeds.

How to use?

Benefits

Provides latest updates.

Saves surfing time.

It gives the power of subscription to the user. Users are given a free-hand on which websites to subscribe in their RSS aggregators

It lessens the clutter in your in-box.

Unsubscribing is hassle-free.

Feeds can be limited to the full site or only specific categories or topics of information.

Forums

Forums are web applications, or platform for discussing and sharing content among on-line users.

Also known as web forums, message boards, discussion boards, (electronic) discussion groups, discussion forums, bulletin boards.

They are available for both technical as well as non-technical stuff.

How it works?

Each forum has multiple categories of discussions.Each discussion has collections of threads.Searching and browsing a forum for a specific topic is accessible to everyone.Only registered/subscribed members of a forum can post or discuss an issue.

Forum Examples

Drupal Forums http://drupal.org/forum (List of Forums)Support Forum http://drupal.org/forum/18 (Before you start, Post

Installation, Installating Drupal, Module Development)General Forum http://drupal.org/forum/17 (News and announcements,

General Discussion etc)

How to Use?

Generally categories and discussion topics are fixed by administrator of the forum. So you can't change them.Registered users can start a new thread against any of the available discussions.Like mailing lists it is always advisable to search the forum for already existing threads against the issue/topic. The moderators of the forums mostly rejects the duplicate discussion threads.

IRC Channels

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat.Among various available chat servers irc.freenode.net is dedicated for discussions in open source products and technologies.

Requirements

IRC client - X-CHAT

ChatZilla : Firefox Add-on (an alternative option)IRC account (mandatory for accessing various channels)

Some IRC channels of interest

#drupal-support

#drupal-hyderabad

#jquery

#apache

#ubuntu

Pros & Cons

ProsYou can put all your queries interactively in front of allthe available users.Feedback response time is comparatively better thenother available options in most of the cases.Seek clarifications on received feedbacks quickly.

ConsIRC channels might not be available for the desiredproduct or technology.

Resources & Links

Linkshttp://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/new2irc.html

Wikihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chathttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IRC_commands

groups.drupal.org

Types of Group:

Geographical Working Group Event planning

Examples

http://groups.drupal.org/india

http://groups.drupal.org/translations

http://groups.drupal.org/hyderabad

Favourite Drupal Resources

Best Drupal Resources for Modules, Themes, and PHP code

http://groups.drupal.org/node/14736 (Please bookmark this)

A list of Aggregators, Blogs, Books & Podcasts

Few Examples

http://www.drupalmodules.com

http://www.webchick.net

http://www.lullabot.com/podcast

http://mustardseedmedia.com/podcast

http://learnbythedrop.com/

http://yadadrop.com/drupal-video

Thank you